Western Conference power rankings, Part 1: Wemby’s ascent and the imperfect Pelicans

Welcome back to another year of Empire of the Suns‘ offseason review of the Western Conference and power rankings heading into the new season, a.k.a. Kellan using his one-time for the year that Kevin will edit something no matter how long it is.

This season requires a major asterisk. The story would have gone up by late July had it not been for the obvious chess pieces we are waiting for on the board. Bruce Brown is still on the Toronto Raptors, somehow.

There are a few teams here that feel incomplete, clearly still in the midst of trade negotiations while battling through the limitations of these apron rules that have ruined flexibility for that thing that garners a fair amount of interest — trades! Those wrinkles in the latest collective bargaining agreement were a gigantic fail from an entertainment perspective.

For now, there aren’t any potential moves in the West that should drastically shift the pecking order, so these spots should be relatively close to where they would land regardless.

With Part 1, we begin in that unknown space to whet your appetite for potential wheelin’ and dealin’ that could be on the way.

Tier 7 — The perfect time to suck

15. Portland Trail Blazers

Congratulations to Portland for landing in last for the second straight season! There are both short- and long-term questions with the roster to monitor.

In drafting Donovan Clingan seventh overall, the Blazers indicated neither Deandre Ayton nor Robert Williams II is the ideal starting center for the present or future. For those in the Valley lower on Ayton, last season went about as expected. There were major lulls before a surge late in the season reignited the “if we can get that version of him” consistency conversation for a player entering his seventh NBA season.

Williams was hurt again, and even on a deal with only two years left on it, he’s got some major medical hoops to jump through before a team would consider acquiring him.

Ayton makes $34 million this year and is an expiring $35.5 million contract the year after. His career has suddenly entered a mercurial state now that it appears a second team is giving up on him. His contract is drastically overpriced for any team that still may have interest in him as a starting center. Williams is at a more affordable $12.4 million.

Jerami Grant is one of the central players we are waiting for to get traded, but he’s on the Bradley Beal paradigm. He’s definitely overpaid, with four years and over $130 million left on his deal. Can any contender or fringe play-in team make that work?

Keep an eye on Anfernee Simons. He’s a legitimately great offensive guard with two years left on his deal and is fairly redundant playing alongside Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe. Again, like Grant, a price tag of $25.8 million this season probably complicates the ability to move him, but both he and Portland have to decide if he’s the guy the rebuild is centered around.

Anyway, this team will be very, very bad again. That is no slight to some of the fun complementary players they have like Deni Avdija and some of the possible nuggets discovered on the back-half of the bench like Dalano Banton, Toumani Camara and Duop Reath.

14. Utah Jazz

The Lauri Markkanen variable was the one seemingly a handful of teams were waiting on. Because of the date he just signed his extension, Markkanen cannot be traded until next offseason, which is when he will have more value.

For back-to-back years, the Jazz have essentially declined play-in opportunities. They were 35-36 and 25-26, respectively, at points in those seasons before a mix of sitting injured guys and selling at the deadline led them to crater out.

Utah will be competitive again. Markkanen is a stud and there’s still enough Collin Sexton and Jordan Clarkson around to keep the Jazz in games. Both of those guards have two years left on their deals and the odds both are still on the roster by the end of the year are low. There is no reason to rank Utah any higher because of its clear intent to hop in its bomb shelter and wait out the storm while nearly everyone else in the West is good.

What could theoretically change things as soon as this year would be breakouts for their recent draft selections like Keyonte George, Taylor Hendricks, Cody Williams, Isaiah Collier and Kyle Filipowski. All of them have some level of fandom from smart basketball folks to believe there is high-end upside there. George is absolutely headed toward becoming a solid pro while Hendircks and the three rookies will get more opportunities than the Jazz previously allotted to show something.

Tier 6 — Attempting to transfer to the Eastern Conference

13. Los Angeles Clippers

There is a feint sentiment not to bet against the Clippers being a reliably great NBA team in the regular season before they fizzle in the playoffs. The Clippers are also averaging just under 46 wins per season over the last three, hardly giving confidence to suggest they are not immune to falling into the play-in pit.

It was great to see Kawhi Leonard look like Kawhi Leonard again and he played 68 games last year. James Harden took a major step back, attempting only 11.4 shots per game, and still remained rather effective as an initiator. The star power punch of that pair has some sting left in it, even as the two are in their mid-30s.

The concern is what exactly this team is supposed to be beyond that after losing Paul George in free agency. Here’s an alarming question: Who is the third-best player on this team? I think it might be Ivica Zubac? The third-highest paid is Norman Powell.

We have arrived at an age-old problem in roster construction when a collection of seventh-to-ninth men make up all of the rotation after one or two All-Stars. You like Terance Mann just like me and Nic Batum always finds a way to impact games. The signings of Derrick Jones Jr. and Kris Dunn were smart defensive additions. If this is the team to figure out Mo Bamba, the second unit might border on being fun to watch, at least on one end of the court.

But they are screwed when Leonard and Harden miss a week or six. When they don’t, it’s probably a fairly scrappy bunch. That’s not nearly good enough in this conference.

12. Golden State Warriors

I have never liked a team’s offseason more in a way that did not affect their standing at all.

The Warriors rebounded from the loss of Klay Thompson by bringing in De’Anthony Melton, Kyle Anderson and Buddy Hield — a trio of trustworthy veterans who will provide more as a combination than Thompson did individually. Jonathan Kuminga is definitely good and could be really good. Brandin Podziemski is at least going to be a great glue guy. Based on the way the Warriors kept him out of trade talks, they believe he will be much more than that.

The hesitation lies with Draymond Green and Andrew Wiggins. Green can still be a very effective version of what he was in his prime. It’s the increasingly volatile nature of his shenanigans plus the fact that he is not the player he once was that makes him unable to act as a true co-star alongside Stephen Curry. Wiggins’ career is one of the strangest for a No. 1 pick, ever. He at long last figured out what he is in the league and did so as an incredible supporting cast member on a championship team before regressing significantly the last two seasons.

This team goes 12-deep. While Curry is 36 years old, he remains one of the best players in the world. And all of that can’t fix what is a wholly uninspiring 2-7 of the rotation to compete.

11. Houston Rockets

Last year, our hypothesis on the Rockets was an upside of the 2018-19 Clippers, a 48-win squad without an All-Star that was loaded with really great ancillary pieces. Some version of that unfolded. Houston went 13-9 to begin the season and 16-7 to end it. It’s just that the Rockets were 12-25 between that to land at .500.

The Kevin Durant trade speculation was entirely about the Rockets wanting to trade for a star and nothing about Durant. It did perk up the ears on if something else is at play here. If there is, they can really certify themselves in the next echelon of the conference, confidently a play-in team. Without a deal, it’s mostly the same story, a very fun roster lacking star power.

Center Alperen Sengun will be an All-Star in the near future. But he’s not going to be an absolute force capable of carrying this team, a team that requires some real oomph elsewhere. A season later, we are largely in the same position we were with Jalen Green and Jabari Smith Jr., two players who are obviously good. But we have no idea about how good. There are a few really smart folks who think Reed Sheppard should have been the No. 1 pick. Maybe he’s that guy.

The rest of the roster is ready if any of those three have a big-time jump in them. Tari Eason and Amen Thompson make up the most fun role-player wing duo around. Eason only played 22 games last year and Thompson was a rookie, so expect to see far more of them in highlight packages this season. Former Sun Jock Landale was a key cog in the push across the stretch run, and if Steven Adams is healthy, that’s an awesome bash brothers from Down Under tandem.

If the offense led by Fred VanVleet can find some viability from those young-ins, this is a playoff team. They immediately established an identity around defense and grit last year, a dangerous combination for others to deal with given the amount of athleticism and length on the roster.

Tier 5 — So close yet so far

10. Los Angeles Lakers

I was a huge believer in this team last season. They got 70-plus games out of both Anthony Davis and LeBron James. Both got All-NBA nods. And yet, all of *motions around the room* this didn’t work. A supporting cast that seemed fairly complementary never found a balance. The only real spurt was an 11-3 finish to the season and they couldn’t even get a real series out of a totally wounded Denver Nuggets group even with some tremendous sequences from James sprinkled in.

There’s a good chance this was a version of what happened in Phoenix, a group submarined by a disconnect between the coaching staff and players. On paper, it’s five players most teams would love to have around two superstars. A pair of those, Jarred Vanderbilt and Gabe Vincent, combined for 40 games played. Dalton Knecht slipping to them in the draft was a heist, gifting a roster ready to launch under J.J. Redick the best NBA-ready shooter in the draft.

The problem is that’s where the improvements stop. It does not seem like nearly enough. Do we really want to talk ourselves into this being the year for D’Angelo Russell? A breakout for Rui Hachimura or Austin Reaves? It seems like the ship has done sailed on James’ chances at a title here. That’s why they seemed like an obvious candidate to make a fairly substantial trade this offseason. But nothing has come and the front office sounds OK with not going all-in. The needle gets moved a bit with acquiring someone in that Bruce Brown or Cam Johnson range. Until then, doubts persist.

9. New Orleans Pelicans

This is almost certainly not the final roster and I reserve the right to move them up a peg or two depending on what the trade is. You know the “MINE!” birds in Finding Nemo? Imagine those saying “behind!” in the The Bear’s kitchen. That’s how many cooks there are here.

Right now, two of C.J. McCollum, Dejounte Murray, Brandon Ingram, Zion Williamson, Herb Jones and Trey Murphy II will come off the bench. That is for a group with a center rotation consisting of rookie Yves Missi and journeyman Daniel Theis. Unless there’s some funky small-ball tomfoolery afoot, which would be completely bonkers and amazing to watch.

Either way, math ain’t math-ing. Let’s assume it’s McCollum or Ingram on the move and the return is decent. Then it will be much easier to forecast a really good basketball team. A strange pitstop in Atlanta halted Dejounte Murray’s ascent drastically after it took a while to get going in the first place with San Antonio. He is fantastic and this should serve as the best thing to happen to his career if New Orleans gives him room to work. Honestly, that should mean moving away from both McCollum and Ingram.

Here is the craziest prediction I will make all year: This will be the year for Zion Williamson. Last season was about staying healthy. And then he was incredible at the end of the season, including a spectacular performance in Phoenix that felt like one of those moments when you realized you are seeing a big one unfold in real-time. Yes, this ended with him getting hurt. But! This will be the year it all comes together! New Orleans is already financially committed to him so it might as well do so with its roster construction instead of loading up on scoring in case Williamson is hurt again. Maximize it!

That’s easy to do because Jones and Murphy are terrific, a 3-and-D wing duo that very well could be the best in basketball to offset star-level talent. Outside of putting some stock in a Year 2 arrival for Jordan Hawkins as a concrete part of the rotation, the supporting cast feels a little light. It’s almost like … a trade is on the way! *gasps*

8. San Antonio Spurs

Let’s establish three things.

One, there is little to no result for Victor Wembanyama’s second season that would be surprising individually. All-NBA and Defensive Player of the Year seem more likely than not. He got better so fast as a rookie that becoming an MVP candidate is on the table. The way he stepped up as a 20-year-old versus Team USA in a gold medal game overflowing with pressure in front of his home crowd was telling.

Two, Wembanyama was on the court with a few properly functioning NBA players last year. The 22-60 Spurs were good in small pockets. The foursome of Wembanyama, point guard Tre Jones, two-guard Devin Vassell and wing Jeremy Sochan outscored teams by 6.7 points per 100 possessions in 626 minutes. Take out the non-shooter Sochan and funnel it down to just the trio, the only three legitimate rotation-level players on the roster, and you got a 9.0 net rating in 806 minutes.

Three, Chris Paul has won just about everywhere he’s been. The combined record of Paul’s teams over his career is 946-576. That is an average of 50 wins per season even with three shortened seasons. He hasn’t finished below .500 since 2010 when the iPhone 4 was released.

Paul is not the player he once was. In both Oklahoma City and Phoenix, two situations you wouldn’t have expected to see him in, he proved he was still one of the best in the world. This will not be Round 3 of a renaissance to that level. But he’s still effective and is still the Point God. Even in 28 minutes a night, Paul is going to completely change how San Antonio operates and show an aimless group of mediocre talent how to win. And for goodness sake, he will set up Wembanyama in positions to succeed.

San Antonio prioritized the future over the present in the offseason. There was no use of long-term money in free agency or trading any draft capital to upgrade a roster sorely in need of more capable hands. Harrison Barnes was more of a salary dump, with the prize of that acquisition being a pick swap. Paul comes in on a one-year deal conveniently just under the mid-level exception, allowing him to be a buyout candidate if the ship sinks.

A bounce-back year for Keldon Johnson and No. 4 overall pick Stephon Castle being solid right away would still only give the Spurs eight reliable players. And the gap between their top guy and second-best player is bigger than any in the league.

But man, we all know what Wembanyama is and will soon be. And we all know what Paul does in these situations. We saw both up close. There’s something here.

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